


Phoenixes

by worldaccordingtofangirls



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Cheating, F/M, Implied/Referenced Sex, LAMS DISCUSSED BUT NOT ACTUALLY FEATURED, MOSTLY ABOUT HAMILTON AND ELIZA, Multi, Oral Sex, Recovery, Vaginal Sex, i love recovering after cheating fics what can i say, lots of cunnilingus bc i'm gay, uses the reynolds pamphlet to discuss their entire relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-20
Updated: 2016-05-16
Packaged: 2018-05-27 19:02:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6296044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/worldaccordingtofangirls/pseuds/worldaccordingtofangirls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She grips the first letter too long, until the flame licks at her fingers. For days she will suck at the swollen, red tips, feeling the blood pushing at the surface of her skin, trapped just beneath. The beat, the melody. The almost-reality of a wound. </p><p>She hopes he sees, wishes he couldn’t.</p><p>[An exploration of Eliza and Alexander's relationship, from beginning to end. Uses the aftermath of The Reynolds Pamphlet, intertwined with flashbacks, to show how love generates, destroys, and redeems itself, and how it fuels and preserves our histories. Mentioned Hamilton/Laurens and Hamilton/Reynolds; character death re: Laurens & Philip.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Into Flames

**Author's Note:**

> THIS IS A TWO-PART FIC! 
> 
> SECOND INSTALLMENT WILL BE UP IN LESS THAN A WEEK! 
> 
> THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR READING!

She grips the first letter too long, until the flame licks at her fingers. For days she will suck at the swollen, red tips, feeling the blood pushing at the surface of her skin, trapped just beneath. The beat, the melody. The almost-reality of a wound.

She hopes he sees, wishes he couldn’t.

—

The night they met was cold.

For the first few days, she can’t even look at him. She speaks in half-sentences, eyes cast at the floor or focused on a spot on the wall behind him. The ceiling, even. Anywhere. She hates talking. Her tongue feels dry, not worthy of her trust, on the verge of disintegrating always — ash, filling her mouth, her ears and nose. At dinner they hold it together for the children. But surely Philip and the others notice how their mother’s eyes never stray from her own hands, how their father slips into his office with a pillow tucked beneath his arm and a blanket, too, despite the sticky August air.

That was something she said to him, in a voice that did not tremble: you forfeit your place in our bed.

The night they met was cold—bitter, the kind that sharpens the stars into knife points, clean and beautiful. But it was warm inside. The light of the candles, their tiny, flickering hearts; dancing shapes on the walls, and the heat of dancing bodies, dancing eyes. She remembers clutching Angelica’s arm, whispering in her ear. It was warm enough that moving in time with the music brought a film of sweat to her neck, faint and sweet. Angelica kissed the side of her head and smiled, which was her way of making promises.

And so Eliza waited, breathless, for him to come. And he came; true to her word, Angelica brought him, warm and human and real, with blood in his veins and light in his eyes.

He came and kissed her hand and winked and moved sharply, and she felt the shadow of his lips on her bones, and as they danced—with his hand on the small of her back, and between them the static of their chests, and their eyes locked—the candles and the bodies and the sweat seemed to melt the soft black core of his gaze. And then it was liquid, spilling over the edge and into her, and in the first letter he sent there was the same ink, immortalized on the page, framed in dark trails in the places where he had forgotten to blot. Somehow she felt it, running from the tip of his quill to the page and beyond, like the lines were trying to reach her, stain her, inhabit her.

In his letters she felt him, Alexander Hamilton, this man who loved her; she felt him, this man who wrote like he was running, running, running.

Over her shoulder, Angelica clicked her tongue.

“Be careful with that one, love,” she murmured. “He will do what it takes to survive.”

For weeks she is surprised by him in the house. Like running into a stranger on the street. She knows it is taking a toll on him, too; she sees it in the pale sheen of his skin, the texture of parchment; the colorless circle of his lips, always falling open when he sees her but never speaking; and the lank, greasy lines of his hair, drifting unkempt against his slumped shoulders. Whenever they run into each other a tense block of silence edges between them. She does not know how to navigate it and for the first time in their marriage, perhaps in his entire life, neither does he. For all his fiery convictions, his fits of passion, for all his verbosity and charisma, at the sight of the destruction he has wrought he finally seems to be utterly useless.

The first time she saw him after she read the pamphlet, she didn’t yell or scream; she doesn’t yell or scream, and besides she didn’t have the strength. She just looked at him, and he said he was sorry. And then she turned away because—well, seventeen years.

Seventeen years. What could she say to him?

Once he had tried. Seeing her in the hallway he took a step forward, balancing on the jagged edges that had arisen between them, lower lip trembling.

“I wish you would speak to me,” he said. “Eliza.”

And she had not known what to say, and she had not wanted to look at him because it made her feel angry and alive, like she could tear into his flesh with nothing but her fingernails, but also because somewhere deep within her she felt none of those things, only soft and sad, and she did not know what to do with that. So she turned away, and now he watches her warily at breakfast, at dinner—when he’s home for dinner, though that is more often than not nowadays because his career is rapidly crumbling, his honesty the only virtue to his name—like she is a powder keg about to explode.

Is she?

She wishes she knew. She remembers Angelica’s clicking tongue.

Angelica clicked her tongue, but months later she looked proud as she helped Eliza touch her mouth with rogue. Peggy slept on; Angelica kissed Eliza’s cheeks, each one twice, and told her to be careful.

“The moon is out,” whispered Eliza. “I’ll be alright.”

“He doesn’t deserve you,” said Angelica, handing her the lamp.

Eliza smiled. Squeezed her sister’s hand.

“I know.”

She remembers the chill of the air; the cradle of the morning. The sharp points of rocks under the soft soles of her shoes. The pale stain of moonlight, washing the color from the trees and the fields, from her outstretched hands. A glimmer of lamplight, here and there, as she stalked among the dark tents. And the crawl of anxiety along the back of her neck until she found his—awake, of course, and glowing.

“Miss Schuyler?” He looked so bewildered, and it seemed so impossible for him—such a contrast to the high-vaulting, intelligent language of his letters, the impetuous turn of his mouth, the confidence with which he spoke of his future, his place in history—that it hurt her, suddenly, how much she already loved him. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m seeing you,” she said, lamely. And then: “I don’t know.”

He only stared at her, jaw slack.

“I wasn’t…” She had to take a breath. “In your letters, I wasn’t Miss Schuyler.”

His eyebrows rose.

“No. You weren’t.”

She waited. Swallowed.

“So. You can call me Eliza.”

“Jesus Christ,” he said. “Come in.”

Inside it felt like his letters. A tiny cot, the covers bunched up to one side. Clothes everywhere, too many for just one man; was it a friend, she asked, and he shook his head—a friend, yes, just John Laurens. He’d make sure to introduce them someday. She smelled sweat and melted wax and old papers pressed together. Pushed up against the bed, a writing desk and a chair, ink-stained; and books, unsteady towers of letters and books, each more fragile than the last. Eliza blew out her lamp. There was plenty of light.

Alexander paced to the edge of the cot and fell still again, eyes on the wall. A long moment passed before he jolted back to life and pulled the chair from the writing desk with a clatter. In his haste he stumbled and swore, poorly muffled against his sleeve.

“Please, sit.”

His face, she realized, was flushed.

“Oh,” she said, flustered because he was flustered, flustered by everything, and not thinking. “I was just imagining you sitting there, writing to me. In the—in the...I, ah...I’m not sure, it’s just...the desk, it suits you.”

For the first time that night, his eyes fell intent on her—dark and full, studded with pinpricks of lamplight.

“The desk...suits me?”

“I...well, it’s all covered in ink. I always...you see, you’re very bad at blotting, I noticed in your letters, and I always imagined...” She gestured feebly at his hands, tucked out of sight in his pockets. “Your hands, that they would be covered in ink, too…”

He quirked a brow. And she saw something new shimmer across his face—something not powerful or analytical, something simple, light, something that made her chest open, expand. Something she wanted always.

“Elizabeth Schuyler, I declare.” And then he laughed, and his eyes sang, and her blood discovered all the same notes. “You are full of surprises.”

“Just Eliza,” she managed. “Please.”

The laughter left his eyes; they darkened.

“Eliza,” he said, with a deep, rolling tenderness, and took a step towards her. Part of her wanted to take a step back—it was too much, what should she do with her body—and part of her was rooted to the spot. “My letters. Did you like them?”

“Yes. Very much. You write...beautifully.”

“Beautifully?”

“Yes.” He was close, closer than ever before, closer than even the first time they danced. The backs of her knees, she realized, pressed against the edge of the cot. She should have sat down. Angelica would have sat down. “Although.”

“Although?”

“Although at times you could use an editor.”

At that he threw back his head and laughed, free and whole, his whole body alive with it. Eliza’s blood stuttered. He lifted one hand, hesitated—this seemed unlike him, and her heart filled her throat as she wondered what quality, what uniqueness in her could have possibly brought this out in Alexander Hamilton, this boy on the verge of manhood who was endlessly charging forwards—and then, so gently she barely felt the touch, he hooked his thumb and index finger around her chin.

“Elizabeth. Eliza. Betsey,” he murmured, and she shivered. “My God, can I kiss you?”

She didn’t have enough air in her lungs to speak; she just nodded. A smile touched the edge of his mouth, and his eyes met hers in all their force and fullness before he bent forwards. It wasn’t Eliza’s first kiss, exactly—even the most chaste and charming society ladies got swept into a corner at one season’s ball or another. But even the most courageous and charming suitors were too quick, too nervous to really focus on it, giving her nothing but a dry, emotionless press of skin, maybe the uncomfortable slide of a tongue if they were really daring.

But Alexander—well, it only made sense that Alexander, so dedicated to all his passions, would be thorough with Eliza, as well. His kiss was deep and dark and nuanced; there was conviction in it, purpose, and an exaggerated, almost arrogant beauty. Just like everything he did, it captivated her; she felt rooted to him, utterly still, forgetting how to move, forgetting what movement even was. It was only by some deep-embedded mechanism she had not known she had that she moved against him, letting her mouth part when his tongue edged forwards.

He pulled back for just a second, watching her. She realized she was breathing hard, and he smiled, pushing the hair back from her face, tilting his head in something akin to wonder before he kissed her again. This time, he opened his mouth, and when he ran his teeth suddenly against her lower lip something strange seized her and she caught his hair in one hand and pulled. He broke off, a shattered piece of her name falling from her lips, and at the distorted look in his eyes she wondered if she had done something wrong. But then he surged towards her again as if he could somehow get closer, closer, closer; her weight shifted, and she felt the backs of her knees acutely, pressed against the edge of the cot.

With a new, trembling sharpness, she realized he might press her down against the mattress. Realized she wanted him to—she knew, not a lot, but she knew. And wanted it with him, the live, taut string of his body. Thrumming in tune.

She let herself go, stopped holding up her own weight, expecting to fall. But he clung to her, stronger than she expected from his small, tight frame.

“No.” He pulled his mouth from hers, edged away when she tried to press against his neck, eyes shut tight. “Eliza, no.”

“What?” She couldn’t help the hurt in her voice. “You don’t want to.”

“Of course I do,” he groaned. “But it’s too dangerous. I didn’t even know that you were...Eliza, you have caught me very much off guard. In a good way. You are brilliant, and of course I want to. But please. Wait.”

“For what?”

“When we marry.”

She stiffened in his arms. At last he opened his eyes. Smirked.

“Surely you knew that was my intention.”

“I...suspected. But it is another thing entirely to hear it.”

“Well?”

She lifted her chin, tried to seem composed.

“Alright, I suppose.”

“Alright?” He looked at her, incredulous, and then he laughed, hard enough that she felt it like a wave crashing against her ribs. “Alright, you suppose.”

“I do suppose,” she replied.

He pressed his lips to her forehead, the shape of a smile.

“Indeed, my dear Eliza. You do.”

—

It just hits her, sometimes. It’s overwhelming. She can’t help it. Bursts of memory—slivers of their happiness, cutting through the clever, careful constructions she’s forced into being, into survival. She’s chopping vegetables in the kitchen when she hears the door open and shut, and forgetting everything she hopes it’s him, waits for the moment he slips into the kitchen and runs his arms around her waist, lips against her neck, hands alluding to her breasts until she has to shoo him away, gasping, laughing.

She’s sitting down, elbows on the table, face cradled in her hands, when Philip walks in.

“Mother,” he says.

She looks up. Wishes he didn’t have to see her like this—the color rising in erratic shapes on her face and neck, and the swollen underbellies of her eyes, clouded.

“I hate him,” he says, and the conviction in his gaze—the fierceness of it, the light and heat—is too familiar to bear. No, no. No.

“No, Philip.”

“I do!” He circles the table, tries to meet her eyes. “I hate him. What he did to you, it’s just...what he did to us, I can’t...”

He trails off as she looks at him. Her first son, their baby boy. She remembers the way Alexander looked at him when he was born. How he cradled him. The restless grit and noise of war still in his skin, his own childhood stitched even deeper, in blood and bone and tendon, far down in places she couldn’t touch. The calluses from writing, and on his fingertips the burns—wax, matches, fuses—sealed over pink, eerily fresh where the dead skin had peeled away. And yet he held Philip close to his chest, one torn palm supporting his tiny body, the other sustaining the fragile bridge of his neck. Alive. He sat by his cradle for hours, like it was his desk and their baby the quill and ink; she had to coax him away, threading her fingers through his hair, kissing the back of his neck, just to make him eat.

Alive. Beginning. Alive and beginning.

And the way he looked at her, when they were sitting side by side or across the table, their fingers threaded together, or in the rare moments when Philip slept and her legs clutched around his waist, or...or when their eyes met over their son’s warm, moving body, cradled heavy and real between them and she felt something flow from him to her and back again, carried by the sheer force of his eyes, their round and tremulous power.

The second time she got pregnant, he cried. She didn’t know what to do. She froze, confused and frightened; he loved Philip so much that she had been sure he would be happy, and she didn’t know what to do with this, with grief instead of joy. She said his name, put a hand on his arm, and then he was grabbing her by the waist and kissing her again and again and again and it was all she could do to dig her fingers into his hair, the gentle skin at the back of his neck, and cling. Cling and cling and cling.

“I never got to do this before,” he said against her mouth. She was breathless, laughing—crying, too, because she could feel the wet of his tears on her skin, taste them on her lips. “I never got to tell you.”

“Tell me...Alexander, Alex…” She gasped, pushing against his chest so she could talk. He sealed his mouth somewhere just below her ear and she had to chase the shiver from her voice. “Tell me what?”

He pulled away then, cradled her face in his hands, and met her gaze with the full force of his dark, luminous eyes, the surface trembling with unshed tears like the fragile skin of fresh letters on the page. How long had she known those eyes? And yet still beneath the entirety of their liquid weight she felt something in her crumple, weaken—weakness bordering on fear, terror, love, a deep imbalance.

“Thank you,” he said.

“What?”

“Thank you,” he said, and kissed her again; against his open mouth she couldn’t help but swallow the words, chew them up and make them part of her, forever. “You gave me a second life.”

“I...What?”

“A second life, Eliza. I was too upset to tell you the first time. For that, I’m sorry.”

“There’s nothing…” She touched him now, balancing the pad of her thumb on the full swell of his lower lip, ghosting her fingers along his jawline, the tiny ridges of her skin catching against the stubble there. “Nothing to be sorry for.”

He shook his head, then—slowly, like a man underwater, blinking his eyes at her like he was chasing bars of sunlight through the depths. He pushed a strand of her hair from her cheek. Then he put a hand at the small of her back and pulled her to him, pressing his face into her neck.

“I love you, Betsey.” And then, quieter: “My Eliza, my life.”

The worst thing is she knows he meant it. Knows it deep in her bones, like nothing else, sewed into her insides—the mottled outlines of those words, branded forever against the walls of her stomach, her ribcage and lungs. Knows it in a way she’ll never forget.

Impossible. How is this possible?

“He loves you,” she says quietly.

“I don’t care. I hate him.”

She knows he doesn’t but it still hurts; she still sees him with the Reynolds Pamphlet in his hands, jaw slack, tears in his eyes. Too young for this. Just a baby, still. Hers. Theirs, and her whole body groans to admit it, but it’s true—theirs.

“Please, Philip.”

“For God’s sake, ma, just let me hate him!” He isn’t supposed to talk like that, but he’s almost grown and she doesn’t have the heart to correct him. She can feel the genuine exhaustion in it, the confusion, and he’s right to talk that way—he’s made to be an adult, in this moment. He fires off a violent breath from his nostrils. “Don’t you?”

She meets his eyes, then. They are wide and full. Not quite like Alexander’s—clearer, like water where the sunlight still reaches. But so perceptive and precocious, so far outside his bounds, and the liquid of them, shifting and fitful. That’s his father’s, every last drop.

“How dare you,” she says quietly.

She thinks he might go, but he doesn’t, just stands there watching her, and suddenly it bludgeons her, how much she loves him, how fiercely. He deserves more than this, than them. Deserves something. Honesty. She bites her lip and turns her face away.

“I don’t know.”

And then she knows he regrets it—didn’t really want the truth, never did. He grabs her hand and kisses it, presses hard against her palm, and lets her go. Leaves her among her turnips and carrots sliced halfway. She stands, grips the knife in her right hand, the edge of the counter with her left. Steadying herself, willing her knees not to give way. Standing, barely, among all these unfinished things.

—

Weeks, months, and then one night she catches him crying in the hall. On his way out, with the tears balanced on the tip of his nose; when he does cry, he doesn’t cry much, but it’s enough. He must have lingered, watching the children sleep, expecting her to already be in bed. He doesn’t know that these days she stays up more often than not, reading or writing—long letters to Angelica, notes in a diary to burn later, meaningless scribbles. She leaves no trace, not anymore, and he won’t know. She won’t let him.

Grey hair, she realizes, visible even in the gloom—a thatch of it, at his temple.

Is he growing old?

Perhaps he is.

Without her?

Something in her stills. Snaps off. The ends curl away.

Is that what this is, then? She stands, caught in the doorway, watching him. In that moment she is with him, just a few feet away. And she knows that he has not slept with anyone else since. Knows that he misses the children. Longs for them. For her. That he hates himself. Loves her. Knows without him needing to tell her. Knows without him. And yet.

“Are you alright, Alexander?”

His whole body seizes. Head turning slowly, mechanically, he looks at her. She flushes with shame, and then she’s furious at herself because none of this is her fault, none of this is up to her to fix. And yet.

“Never mind,” she says. “I know.”

His eyes find hers and it takes all her nerve and anger not to flinch at the brilliant, wet sheen of them—as acute as ever, so familiar, but changed. Not empty, exactly. Stripped. Bare. She holds his gaze.

“Betsey,” he croaks. “I don’t know what to do. You have to help me, please.”

It’s the first time he’s called her by that name since the pamphlet. It strikes her somewhere at the backs of her knees, the muscles failing, and again she draws on the stores of rage inside of her to hold her up; she’s not ready yet, not for that. The truth is she doesn’t know what to do, either.

“The children miss you.” She casts the words over her shoulder—not our children, not your children, just the children, she can’t bear possessives right now—as she turns away, not wanting to see his response, to know if she gets away with it or not. “Be here for them.”

And yet.

Without her.

—

Months, she realizes. Months since he last touched her. Since anyone touched her; when the affair first came to light, she entertained miserable daydreams of returning the favor, of escaping with one of the many, many men she knew admired her, just so Alexander, too, would be made to feel his whole body cave in on itself and for a moment cease to exist. But she never did. Too weak, she had cried into Angelica’s breast. I’m too weak.

Never, Eliza. Her sister’s hands in her hair. Too strong.

She wants to believe Angelica, but at the same time she can’t deny that she misses—warmth, she decides. And the weight of a body beside her on the mattress. And the uncoiling in her belly, low and long and riotous; he was always so good. She tries not to think about it, emptying her mind, emptying everything.

She lies awake, now, running her hands over her thighs, the swell of her stomach, her breasts, and down again; she knows what to do and does it well, the product of a chaste girlhood and the many nights Alexander spent working late at the office, doing—well, she had supposed his business. Doing his business.

He would sometimes slip into bed with her at the blackest, most tender hours of the morning, so early he couldn’t expect her to wake; and yet when he pressed his mouth to the slope of her shoulder she stirred, almost deliberately, sensing the living matter of his body, and his face was freshly washed with the water still caught in his hair so when he leaned over to kiss her the drops fell and traveled in thick trails over the curve of her waste and into the basket of her thighs.

He was always so tired but somehow he found the time to fall to his knees between her legs, and she always disintegrated around him, her heels beating out an unsteady kind of music on the mattress. With him she became a light sleeper; her body knew to wait, too in love even on the nights when he never came home. Even on the nights when he never came home, she couldn’t help it.

She catches her index finger against herself and her body curls off the mattress. It’s been too long, even the smallest things feel like too much. And she doesn’t want to think of him but of course she does. She could never sustain fantasies before she met him; her mind always wandered and she came quietly, thinking of nothing in particular. Then he started writing to her and suddenly her dreams were populated, densely human with dark wiry figures and crooked smiles; erratic, thudding heartbeats; and the melody askew, her crashing to pieces around it.

Out of time, maybe, but always so careful, so tender; and the way he looked at her, she believed it, every note. She couldn’t help it.

She misses warmth. She misses him.

For the first time in her life she comes on a wave of hatred so powerful it leaves her feeling a step away from human.

Can’t help it; she can’t help it.

—

For the first time in a long time, Angelica is home for Christmas, and they throw a party. It’s simple, really; they must have done it ten times before, maybe more. But of course it’s different. Alexander and John go out to get enough food and alcohol, and the girls help Eliza and Angelica in the kitchen while Philip and the boys hang decorations in the dining room and the parlor. The air is warm and sweet, laced with candlelight and the soft reminder of the snow piled up at the windows; her sister and their children are some of the only people who don’t move delicately around Eliza, and she is happy with them, here in her home.

Sometimes she hears Alexander whistling carols or joking with the children; sometimes there is even a bright peal of his laughter, echoing through the house—long overdue, almost like a ghost but alive, vital. It hurts, but she thinks she might be glad.

“The children need joy,” she murmurs to Angelica that night, curled with her on the loveseat one of her father’s rich friends gave to her and Alexander for their wedding.

“So do you,” she replies.

Eliza buries her face in her sister’s neck.

“I don’t know how.”

Angelica came as soon as she heard. Weeks after the fact, of course, but still she was the one to clutch Eliza’s hands, kiss the red and swollen fingertips. She screamed at Alexander. It was the first time anyone had screamed at him, for Eliza found she had only slow, deliberate words, broken up into fragments, and maybe that was good, it was dignified, and she knew he hated it, wanted to see her honest pain, her rage, and it terrified him that she didn’t show it to him, couldn’t show it to him, and maybe it terrified her, too. Once Angelica had finished screaming, she was back with Eliza, holding her as she cried.

“It still feels impossible,” she babbled into her sister’s hair. “It still feels impossible, how could this happen, there’s no way, how could he do this, it’s impossible.”

“Oh, Eliza,” sighed Angelica. “My dearest, Eliza.”

She kissed her cheek, then she got up and went to the bathroom, came back with a cool cloth, the water tracing patterns down her dark, slender wrists.

“You have married an Icarus,” she murmured, dabbing at Eliza’s cheeks and the flushed slope of her neck. “He has flown too close to the sun.”

“Good.” Eliza was taken aback by the venom in her own voice, by the truth of it. The hot, hard strength she felt. “I hope that he burns.”

“Oh, he does.” The vaguest suggestion of a smile played at the edge of Angelica’s mouth; she pushed back Eliza’s hair, pressed the cloth to her forehead. “He does.”

And then the strength was gone and the tears were back, searing the raw skin of her cheeks, mingling with the water that ran from the cloth down the sides of her face, soaking her neckline, pooling at her collarbone.

“What,” she sobbed. “What do I do now?”

Angelica dropped the cloth and pulled her into her arms again.

“Have you stopped loving him?”

Eliza looked at her hands, like the answer might be embedded somewhere between the lines of her palms.

“I don’t know.”

“You’ll just have to wait and see, then. You’ll know. If you stop.”

Eliza held still for a moment, and then she exploded into tears.

“Oh, Angelica,” she wept. “What do I do if I can’t?”

Angelica went silent at that, cradling her against her chest. And Eliza knew her sister well enough to understand her answer. She looks up at her, now, and feels her own heart beat—ka-thump, ka-thump, ka-thump. It amazes her, after everything, that it always comes.

Eliza doesn’t need to say anything. Angelica presses her close.

“I know,” she murmurs. “I know.”

—

After Christmas dinner, Angelica kisses Eliza goodbye; then she and John go home, children in tow, weighed down with gifts and leftovers. The other filter out one by one, shaking Alexander’s hand, kissing hers. Not bothering to keep the sympathy from their eyes. She only lifts her chin, stiff and regal, and feels strong. Her family is smiling. The house is warm and she knows the smell of spice will linger in the air for days. A good show, at least—if tongues must flap, let them flap in debt to her hospitality.

The last guests disappear into the night, and instead of looking at Alexander in the foyer, she goes to make sure the children are tucked away, sleeping like she asked.

They are—even Philip, head pillowed on his arms where he sat watching the others. She laughs, pushes him awake and shoos him back to his room; humming the last notes of a lullaby, she heads back downstairs. She figures Alexander has retreated to his office, and besides the kitchen is a mess; most of it can wait until tomorrow, but she should soak the pots and empty the bottles at the very least. She rolls up her sleeves, still humming, and then she stops in the doorway.

Alexander is at the wash basin, up to his elbows in soapy water, and he is looking at her like she’s caught him stealing.

“I thought you would be asleep,” she says immediately, for lack of anything else to say, any other thought in her mind. The lamplight washes over his skin in unsteady waves, minting it dark and golden, and then it catches in his eyes, the soft black cores. And it’s Christmas; it’s Christmas and he’s washing the dishes, which he never does, and he hasn’t touched her once, not even the pressure of a hand at her elbow.

For a minute she can’t move because last Christmas he couldn’t stop kissing her in front of the children, and later he ran his hands wickedly up her thighs under her skirts, made circles with his teeth on the tender crux of them and then he fucked her slow, gasping that he loved her, before she asked for it harder and then he barely spoke, the terrifying magnitude of his concentration zoomed in on just her body, just her—for a moment, the entire world.

And now it’s Christmas again. Something in her crumples and she can’t remember how it felt before and that is terrifying; for the first time, she is scared.

“I,” he says. “There’s a lot to do.”

She walks over—unable to believe it, quite, and there’s still champagne in her blood, maybe that’s it—and takes the soapy dish out of his hand. Trails of water slip to her elbows, weighing down the lace edging of her sleeves; she puts the dish on the counter. He hasn’t moved. He’s just standing, arms extended over the water, empty-handed. She meets his eyes, then.

When she kisses him, she can tell he’s not breathing. She runs his hands up his arms, curls them around the base of his neck, but still it takes a minute—a more insistent push, the flicker of her tongue—before he responds.

Then he’s pushing her against the counter, everywhere all at once, his hands fisting in her hair as he groans, chest heaving, into her mouth, all or nothing, never one to do things by halves. She clings to him, dizzy with the smell and feel of him, the texture of his hair between her fingers, loses herself in it until with abrupt clarity she feels him pressing against her hip, hard. Her heart skips a beat and he must sense her reaction because he breaks off the kiss, swears against her lips, and lets her go, says he’s sorry.

She wonders how many times she’s heard that from him. She’s sick of it. Hates it. She steps away into the space he’s given her, deciding.

“Eliza,” he says. She doesn’t want to hear it.

“Come upstairs.”

“What?”

“Upstairs, Alexander.” In a voice that does not tremble. “It’s Christmas.”

He looks at her, lip caught between his teeth—like he’s going to ask if she’s sure, God damn him, since when has the man ever waited for anything in his entire life—but then he thinks better of it. Or decides he doesn’t care anymore, that he needs her too much, or something, she doesn’t know. All she knows is that he lets her take his hand, lead him up the stairs, clenching his fingers tight around hers like he’s afraid she’ll disintegrate in his grasp.

But she doesn’t; she opens the door, lets him into this bedroom he hasn’t slept in for months.

This bedroom. Their bedroom?

For a moment she closes her eyes, thinks maybe she can’t do this. But then they’re inside and his hands are snaking around her waist from behind and his mouth finds the back of her neck, soft like before but achy, too, slow like pain—almost. Almost.

Almost is enough; in this moment it has to be enough.

She turns around and takes his face in her hands; she kisses him, starts to step backwards, slowly, across the room until the backs of her knees press against the edge of the bed. She drops her chin, slips to press her cheek against his neck; he groans as the hard circle of her teeth sinks down somewhere near his jugular, hands stuttering on the laces of her dress.

She breathes his name, the ghost of it, into the sweat rising on his skin.

“Eliza, God.”

He sounds like he’s choking; she wants to cry, suddenly, and she kisses him again so she doesn’t have to. With one hand he reaches up, still fighting with the knots that run to her waist, and cups her breast, pressing hard with his thumb over the nipple; she gasps, curves into him, and he seals his mouth on her collarbone, easing his weight down to press her into the mattress as the last of the knots come undone and her neckline slips, breaking open crescents of her skin.

He works the dress away, dropping to his knees at the edge of the bed so he can get her stockings, too, kissing the tender arch of her foot. She closes her eyes and listens to his ragged breathing, the rustle of fabric and the snap of buttons as he strips—the uneasy music of this, whatever it is. She scoots up until her head presses against the pillows, and then she pushes the sleeves of her slip down over her arms, drops it down her body. She still doesn’t open her eyes as she runs her hands over her bare breasts, but she smirks when she hears his breath catch, watching her fingertips dance over her body, tapping out the slope of her belly and the crook of her thighs.

“Eliza,” he whispers, and she opens her eyes. He’s naked, paused with one knee on the foot of the bed; the lamplight spills over his skin, his hair, dips and bubbles in the uncertain rise and fall of his chest.

Waiting—how unlike him.

“Come here,” she says, so faintly she wonders if the words even really made a sound or if she was just breathing, but he comes, filling her arms and kissing her, slipping down her body, catching the fragile skin of her breast between his teeth and laughing when she bucks up, breathless, against him. His tongue circles her bellybutton, and then he’s nosing between her thighs, lips on the tender dip, the inner crux, and then—no, no.

“No,” she gasps, fisting a hand in his hair and pushing him to the side. “I’m ready now.”

He sits up, meets her eyes in confusion—mouth slack, chest heaving, flushed up to his neck—but she just shakes her head and climbs away, gently pressing him down against the pillows so he doesn’t get the wrong idea. He goes without a fight, fitting his hands at her waist as she climbs over him. She takes him in hand, but he’s already so hard; with a stab of satisfaction she realizes she shouldn’t bother. She fills her lungs with air, looks at him, and then at the last moment she loses her nerve—feeling the dark magnetism of his eyes on her, peeling something up off her skin and back into him—and closes her eyes and she sinks down.

He swears, the texture of gravel, and she chokes, bracing her hands on his chest. Immediately he stiffens, a hand flying up to cradle her cheek, and no—not that, it’s too tender.

“Eliza, are you alright? Are you...”

She bites her lip, lifts herself up and plummets back down, hard, and his body convulses, cutting away the words as his hand drops from her cheek to fist in the sheets.

“I’m fine,” she grits out. And she is; she was just overwhelmed, it had been so long, and she had taken him in too deep and fast. She almost says that she’s not used to this but she bites her tongue, not wanting to remind him, terrified he might stop if she brings it up, makes this real. And she needs it too much; she just needs. “You can—move, please.”

He looks at her, the color blotched in his cheeks, for a long moment and she almost screams in frustration before he finally snaps his hips and she tips her head back, mind going blank, thankful for the vague burn of it, the soreness she knows she’ll feel tomorrow. He’s relentless but she knows he’s careful, watching her face for traces of pain, hands firm at her hips to help control his thrusts, fingers pressing down hard, hard enough to bruise, but no harder than he knows she likes. It’s been so long but he doesn’t forget; he doesn’t forget, neither does she.

He’s babbling, and she tries not to hear—jumbled contortions of her name, scattered love you’s and so good’s, missed this, please, so good. She can tell he’s getting close and she starts grinding down in time with his movements, biting her lip as he reaches up to hold her breasts, tweaking the nipples. He’s erratic, now, and she grins, wanting to feel him come, knowing he’s almost there and taking savage pride in how little it took, how desperate he looks beneath her, the fragments of his gaze and the distorted bend of his mouth.

“Wait,” he groans, pushes her off. She wants to protest but then she understands, kisses him hard, and brings him off with her hand—just a few strokes and then he cries out, all the shattered components of her name.

He’s gasping, shivering against her, helpless for just a moment, and then he’s grabbing her and flipping her and hauling her towards him, spreading her thighs. She already feels a wet, heavy thing knotted within her, and she yelps when his tongue flickers over her clit, hands flying to his hair. He ups his pace, sealing his mouth over her, and for a long minute she doesn’t think about anything, just the tightness at the base of her spine, the thick coil of it.

Then she thinks; thinks back, far back, back to her father’s house, on the day Alexander secured her hand. Later, him laughing and shushing her questions as he urged her down the hall, past all the back rooms, into the library; shutting the door, drawing her close, bumping their foreheads together and smirking when understanding dawned on her face.

“Figuring it out now, are we, Betsey?”

“If you’re going to drag me all the way back here while the rest of my family is enjoying a perfectly civil encounter in the parlor,” she replied archly, balancing her hands on his arms, trying to disguise the spark of joy the nickname lit in her beneath a thick layer of disapproval she knew he could tell was feigned. “You brute, the least you could do is kiss me.”

He laughed, throwing his head back as he pushed her hair from her face.

“It’s not my fault you are so unbearably beautiful. You overpowered me; I could not have sat there a moment longer without doing something very foolish, something like this.” He kissed her then, slowly, just the suggestion of his tongue pushing against her lower lip. “Mm, Eliza, I love you.”

It wasn’t the first time he said it, not by any means—he said it all the time, in fact, almost too often, but then again never often enough—but still she felt light, impossibly light, like she might drift away if he weren’t holding her there, firm against the strong, wide warmth of his chest, his beating heart.

“I love you, too,” she whispered, too shy to look at him when she said it, and he kissed her again, smiling against her mouth.

“Christ, Eliza, your color matches your dress.” Laughter danced in his eyes, and she flushed darker—good pink silk, sharply cut at the bodice with wine-colored ribbons and fine sprays of lace. And he was running his hands down her sides, past her stomach, digging his fingers into the generous material of her skirts, flattening his palms over her backside. “Beautiful.”

He kissed her again, deeper, and she curled towards him, gripping the back of his neck. Their tongues slid together and he kneaded his hands into her backside and she moaned, softly, without meaning to. When he pulled back his jaw hung slack, mouth slightly ajar; blotches of color had risen in his cheeks and he was looking at her with a tremulous, uncertain lilt to his gaze, so unlike him that she stilled, almost scared.

His tongue darted out to wet his bottom lip.

“Do you trust me?”

She blinked, lifting one hand to curl her index finger around a lock of hair that escaped his ponytail. He leaned into the touch, watching her.

“Yes. Alexander, what…”

“I want…” He swallowed. “I want to try something. I think you’ll enjoy it, but you must tell me to stop if you don’t, or if you ever feel uncomfortable.”

Eliza arched a brow. “Alexander, I’m not some helpless maiden.”

“Of course you’re not. I just…” He leaned forward and kissed her again, slow and tender. “There are some things they just don’t tell good young girls about. Especially not those raised in polite society. So...please. Just promise me.”

She was confused but she nodded; smiling, he bumped his nose against hers, and then he kissed her again, inching down her neck to her collarbone, running his thumbs in circles over her breasts. She gasped unhappily when he paused, slipping from her arms to grab a chair and prop it against the door. Then, he guided her to perch on the edge of one of her father’s shelves, back pressed against the old books while he nestled between her thighs, pushing down her neckline to suck at the exposed skin. The had done this much before, and she wasn’t sure what he was so nervous about; still, it felt good, and she deftly undid his ponytail, watching his dark hair spill over his shoulders and biting her lip as he ran the ridge of his teeth over her nipple.

“Eliza! Creating more evidence; what would your father say?” He chuckled, breath cooling her skin in staccato bursts. At the gravelly notes in his voice she smirked, giving his hair a tug that made him gasp and stiffen against her. “You’ll have to put it back up when we’re done, you know.”

“I’ll be glad to,” she replied. “Alexander, what…”

He shushed her, coming back up to kiss her hard, and she had to admit there was something new to it, a fresh urgency, like he was trying to tell her something in a language she had not yet mastered. She kissed back but soon he dropped away from her again, sealing his mouth over her neck as his hands worked her skirt up to her thighs; then he stepped back, watching her for a long moment—she smiled back, wanting him to know she was confused but willing, ready, that she loved him, trusted him, wanted him—before he fell to his knees in front of her and pressed his lips to her exposed knee.

She knew how sex worked. Angelica told her ages ago, long before she even met Alexander, helping her learn how to work her fingers over and within herself so it would feel good, so she wouldn’t bleed too much the first time she was with a man—just enough, a virgin who knew how to enjoy herself. She knew about sex, had proposed it to Alexander herself, and yet she wasn’t sure about this, what it meant when he nuzzled against her thigh, pressing the sharp crag of his nose into her skin and breathing, deep, like he was trying to inhale her. It irritated her that he had been right, that in this case she really was a helpless maiden. Still, it didn’t feel bad, and she had meant it when she said she trusted him.

So she waited, one hand balanced on the back of his head, to understand this, to understand him.

When his tongue pressed against her through her underwear, she cried out—a sliver of comprehension, bright and clear.

“Do you want me to stop?”

Her heart screamed in her chest. He had surfaced, watching her, brow knitted in concern, almost too tender to look at. At the same time he was flushed, chest heaving; he wanted this, she realized with a jolt, she could see him hard in his pants with how much he wanted this. Wanted her. She felt suddenly detached from herself, like her entire being was composed only of her heartbeat and the strange, singing ache between her thighs, of the way Alexander looked at her and the way she longed for him, indefinitely, unconditionally.

“Alexander Hamilton,” she whispered. “Don’t you dare.”

A smirk split his face—brilliant, dancing in his eyes, awash with love for her—and then he was yanking her underwear aside and pressing the flat of his tongue fully against her and sucking and she bucked into him, gasping, fingers fisting in his hair. It occurred to her vaguely how dangerous this was, that they had been gone for a while and Angelica, who must suspect, could only hold her father back for so long, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. Her body sang; it felt like the core of her was spreading, hot and real, reaching to every extremity, and she was gone, utterly lost in it until suddenly he stopped, pulling back to sink his teeth into her inner thigh.

She cried out, unable to see his face from beneath her skirts, and tugged sharply at his hair.

“Betsey, please,” he groaned, and the vibrations of his voice against her felt wickedly faint in the absence of his tongue. “People might hear; you have to bite your hand—or something, for the love of God, else you’ll ruin me, too.”

Back in the parlor, she knew Angelica saw the circle her teeth had marked into her left palm. And the way Alexander caught her eye and winked, the way she felt dizzy with the secrecy of it, the heady intimacy of a shared unknown. How primly he kissed her hand, lips brushing just above the mark, and in front of her father—eyes aglow, knowing he had won her. Even now the explosive joy of it returns to her, and her body winds tighter; she’s close, she needs it, it’s been so long.

But then she thinks again and sees heavy skirts pushed up, red flaring like spilled blood against dark, smooth thighs—spreading, on his desk and later in their bed, crimson stains on the pillow. Her stomach clenches with tension and terror and before she can come she kicks, pounding her heels against his back, and tears his head away by the hair, so hard he cries out in pain.

No helping it.

She rolls over, drawing her knees to her naked chest, the heady ache slipping from between her legs; she doesn’t want him to see her, hear her, touch her, breathe her, anything.

“Betsey,” he says.

“Get out,” she gasps, and he does.

—

She wakes with an ache between her thighs. The worst part is she knows she can’t even blame him, because for all his flaws he would never want it like that, not unless she asked. And she had forced it because couldn’t bear it tender, wanted to feel split, alive and burning. She can hear the children’s voices from downstairs, mingling with Alexander’s. He must have known better than to wake her, and now he’s making them breakfast. But he’ll want to talk. He’ll need to talk. Her stomach clenches. What has she done?

She gets up and runs a bath, then she dresses slowly. In the mirror, she realizes his teeth have left a mark at her collarbone and she feels sick, has to sit down on the edge of the bed and gather her wits for a long minute. Once she has composed herself, she waits for the voices to fade before venturing downstairs. Sure enough, the children are gone, like she had hoped. A part of her had expected Alexander to be gone, too—avoiding her, like she so desperately wanted him to, so desperately feared he would.

But there he is, in the kitchen. Washing the dishes. Of course. Now he decides to be a good father, a good husband. She’s not sure what he’s trying to prove, and she almost flees; in fact, she’s turning away when somehow he senses her and puts down the plate, and then he is turning and trying to look at her, though she will not let him meet her gaze.

“I should go,” she says.

He shuts his eyes, and in that moment she is truly frightened because he looks so utterly defeated, almost dead. His hands are clenched at his sides, the knuckles white, and his mouth is distorted, a thin, miserable line. But her fear quickly slips into anger. How dare he; how dare he look so broken when he is the one who did all the breaking.

“I can’t do this anymore, Eliza.”

“You can’t do this anymore?”

“I don’t know what you want from me!”

It strikes her, then, that she doesn’t know what she wants from him, either. That from the breathtaking fire of his conviction, his passions and his triumphs and his failings, from every single one of the words which he pounds out in ink like blood bursting from his very veins, from all of this he has brought forth in her a love too powerful, a death too great. In that moment all she knows is that she loves and hates him in equal parts. She does not know which will win out in the end.

“God, Alexander,” she cries. “Do you know how stupid I feel? Do you?”

“You’re not stupid,” he replies immediately.

“Oh no, of course not,” she sneers. “No wife of the venerable Alexander Hamilton could ever be stupid.”

“That’s not what I meant,” he says. She can tell he’s fighting to keep his voice even. “You know that’s not what I meant.”

“But I am! I should have known.” A laugh bubbles up in her, borderline hysterical, and she fights it down. “God, ever since—well, since 1782, I suppose. I should have known.”

“1782?” And then his voice darkens: “Elizabeth.”

She knows she shouldn’t; God, she knows she shouldn’t. But she’s aching and still sore between her legs and she wants nothing more than to see him up in flames, to watch him crumple, to dispel the ash of him in the wind and be rid of it once and for all.

“Fuck you, Alexander,” she spits. “I don’t know why I should believe anything you say to me anymore.”

That gets him. He’s not a violent man, and her spine thrills in excitement when she sees the muscles in his neck clench; she doesn’t have to be afraid because he won’t hurt her, but he will be angry, furious, and he will not hesitate to make it known, and she wants it. She wants him to be angry, wants him to be furious. She wants it all, wants and wants and wants. And then he’s gripping her by the shoulders, not hard to enough to hurt but hard enough for her to really feel it in her bones, and she’s grateful for it, impossibly grateful, finding a fractured sense of relief in the way his fingers dig into her, seem to scorch her.

“Don’t,” he whispers. “Don’t you dare.”

“Don’t tell me what to do.”

“For God’s sake, I broke that man for you!” There is real desperation behind his rage; she knows that she’s not acting like herself, that she’s killing him, and it hurts her, too, but she can’t stop—not now, maybe not ever. “Broke him, Eliza.”

Finally, she looks him straight in the eyes.

“Well. That makes two of us.”

John Laurens was dead, and Alexander went out for a walk. Eliza wanted him to stay, wanted him to let her comfort him, hold him against her as he cried, but of course he didn’t. Philip had brought them closer but still there was a distance, a gap she was eager to breach but across which he refused to help her. He never spoke of his childhood. Never of the war. And never of Laurens, though she knew he treasured his letters, kept them carefully in a box beneath his desk.

She bit her lip, gazing out the window at his retreating form as if by sheer force of longing alone she could make him ask for her, ready and vulnerable. When he disappeared from her line of vision, she turned to go put the letter away.

She slipped into his study and, easily finding the box, opened it to add the last letter. As she closed the lid, she fumbled the smooth wood, and the box slipped from where she had balanced it on her lap; the letters spilled onto the floor, some of them falling open, face-up. Cursing, she reached for the letters to fold them up again. She didn’t mean to, but her gaze was caught—a stray phrase here, an old, familiar stroke of ink. The lines, in places not quite blotted.

She read them, and she didn’t know what to do. They had never fought before, not really. Of course they used to bicker, but not much else—the real fights would come later, when Alexander got his treasury post and started working late nights and conspiring and raging about Jefferson and getting deep, aching headaches that lasted for days and days—and if anything Alexander always started it, Eliza not being one for confrontation. She hated fighting with him. She loved him so much, and he could be frightening in the right mood, though she knew he would never hurt her.

But this—this was different. This they would have to talk about.

She waited until after dinner, which they ate together in silence, and then she nursed Philip for a while, waiting for Alexander to settle in his office. Once Philip was asleep, she headed upstairs, hesitating a long moment before knocking on the door to his office and slipping inside. He was at his desk, writing, but when she came in he put down the quill and stood, circling around his desk to kiss her hands—a rarity, perhaps a sign of his exhaustion, his need.

“Betsey,” he said. He looked so tired, and her heart clenched, wishing she hadn’t seen, had never known. She loved him, still; infinitely, unconditionally, stupidly. “What’s the matter? Is Philip fussing?”

“When did it end?”

“What?”

“You and Laurens.” The words felt alien on her tongue; the sharp points of them bit against the roof of her mouth. “When did it end?”

He looked at her, and for the first time since they met, his face opened for her like a blank page; every muscle slack and empty.

“Don’t try to deny it.” She did not know how her voice did not tremble. “I found the letters.”

“You…”

He seemed at a loss, and at that she felt a flash of fear. Could words fail him? Alexander Hamilton? Her Alexander Hamilton? Then, another first: never before that moment had he looked at her in anger, but now it sharpened the corners of his eyes, licked slowly at his face, sparked tiny flames in the heart of his gaze. She shrank from it, guilty despite herself.

“They fell out when I was putting the last letter away.” The words tumbled out too quickly as her voice rose to a nervous pitch. “You must believe that I didn’t mean to pry, Alexander, but you were so—broken, so broken when you got the news, I just. I didn’t know what to do, sometimes it’s like you never tell me anything, and I wanted to know what you two shared. I didn’t think you had anything...like this, anything like this to hide from me.”

He dropped her hands and went back to his desk to sit down, gripping the arms of the chair so hard she saw his knuckles go white even in the uncertain dimness of the candlelight.

“Alright,” he said quietly. “Alright.”

“So.” And then her voice did shake; she didn’t want to know but she had to, she had to. “When did it end?”

His shoulders rose and fell in a heavy, ancient sigh.

“Before we met, or—Christ. I ended it when we met, Eliza. As soon as we met. It had been a while since the last time we...saw each other, anyway.” He was wiping his eyes, furiously, to no avail. “Broke his heart, actually.”

“Did you love him?”

“I love you.”

“But did you love him?”

“Eliza, for God's sake!” His voice snapped, then crumpled, and when he looked at her she was terrified by the emptiness of his expression, the utter defeat of it. “I’m in mourning. Is that not answer enough?”

He turned from her, then, and that was the worst part.

“I'm working, Elizabeth. Please.”

In the small hours of the morning, she would find him in the same place, sitting up in his office and writing, of course, with the quill scratching out an uneasy rhythm against the hard wood of the desk. She would circle the back of his chair and drape her arms over his shoulders, clutching her hands in the center of his chest to feel the thrum of his heart, and he would put down his quill and lean into her—cautiously, and she would hate that. With her he was always full, always loved her completely, never halfway; but here he held back and she hated it, hated it.

“I’m sorry, Alexander,” she murmured in his ear. “For interrupting your grieving, and—well, I’m sorry. It’s alright if you loved him. I don’t care, not as long as you love me now.”

She couldn’t help it—her voice turned up at the end, the ghost of a question. He stiffened and then he was clutching her hands in his, close to his chest; she relaxed immediately at the vital reality of him, the pressure of his flesh and blood against hers.

“God, of course I love you. Of course I love you.” He bent to kiss her knuckles again and again and again. “More than anything, Betsey. I forgive you. And I too have reason for shame. We’re married; I should have told you. I just—didn’t know how.”

He turned, eased her into his lap, and kissed her deeply, running his hands up her back and into the soft tangle of hair at the back of her neck.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered again as they parted.

And back then, it was so simple.

“I forgive you,” she whispered right back.

Now, she wonders if she even has the words. Looking at the man in front of her—pathetic, angry, broken—she searches for them and finds nothing but the raw, aching texture of her insides. Perhaps they are gone, then. She does not know if the idea terrifies or relieves her.

Alexander turns away from her and tells her—and this part she knows too well, like the back of her hand—that he has so much work to do.

Scorched away, to nothing.

—

When she got married, the piano was the one thing she insisted on taking from her parents. Angelica wanted it, too, but she ceded the moment tears sprung into Eliza’s eyes—you taught me here, my scales and a couple of melodies, and mother and father clapped even though I wasn’t good. Please, for my children. Please. Let me teach them what you taught me; let me be a good mother to them, one who fills an empty home with beats, with chords and scales and voices, tripping down them one by one.

And Angelica looked at her and thought about emptiness and realized a house so often without Alexander—his music, his magnetic and unsteady melody—would need to be filled, and so the piano was Eliza’s, without another word.

Tiny hands, inching up the scales: un deux trois quatre cinq six sept huit! And then he would hold it there, waiting, and grin at her wolfishly before releasing the last note, dreadfully off key. She would take a deep breath but then he would dissolve into laughter, and she could never quite scold him because she would have to be serious if she did and that was too much of a waste, to not laugh when he loved life so much, took such delight in a single note gone wrong and ringing, ringing, ringing in their huge and silent home.

NEUF!

Neuf: discordance. Ringing, ringing, ringing. She is clutching him. Blood, she realizes; blood on her dress, blood on her hands, blood at the corner of her eye where he reaches up to run his thumb over her cheek. Alexander got there first and he is still there, clinging, clinging, clinging. He glances at her many times (it is not often that they are so close) but she will not waste a single moment on him, not a single, trembling, moment. She wants the agony of it preserved whole. Forever.

Running, running, running out of time.

The notes, rising on the air, filling the rooms, tripping all the way to Alexander’s study and back down, back to her, catching in her ears and in her grasping hands and each one tastes sour, each one not quite right, and she loves them all, each and every one.

Sept, huit, neuf.

Sept, huit, neuf.

Sept, huit,

neuf.

Later, Alexander will reach for her hand, and she will hear scales in her head, notes echoing down hallways and up staircases in her mind, forming the walls of a house almost empty but not quite, not quite. Just Eliza and her son and many, many rooms—silent, impossibly silent if it hadn’t been for him, her first child, her baby boy.

Alexander will reach for her hand, and she will snatch it away.

—

After the funeral, Alexander goes silent. John and Angelica help them pack up the house, make dinner, play with the kids and get them ready to leave. In the carriage, Alexander covers his eyes with one hand. Eliza doesn’t need to; she knows she will not look back as they drive away.

It’s quiet uptown. Angelica knew, without asking, to leave the piano.


	2. From the Ashes

Icarus sank into the sea. He died that way. The wax melted, and he fell and sank and drowned, and his father could not save him no matter how much he wept. Still, Eliza wonders if in the moments before his death he was not happy — relieved, at least, that the water had cooled the singed span of his wings into oblivion. 

In their new home where voices are quiet, where people move slow and soft like they are dust or a breeze through the curtains or already ghosts, in their new home where there is suddenly more than enough time to read, to bake, to play with the children or teach them their letters, in their new home so full of silence waiting to be filled, she begins to wonder what all of this was for. 

She begins to long for coolness.

— 

Once, she asked Alexander what it felt like. To lose his mother. To lose everything. He had looked up at her in the silence left behind by the scratching of her quill; this was back during the time when she used to sit up with him and, when his hands became too cramped and tired, write out the words as he dictated. 

“What was it like?”

He repeated her words incredulously, but Eliza only nodded; she did not know what else to say to make him understand. They always sat near each other when his hands cramped, and he was so close she could have touched him, could have pressed the pads of her finger to her skin and felt the give of it, the reality of his flesh and blood — his life, Alexander Hamilton, alive. And yet in that moment she felt something yawning open between them, and it was not unfamiliar; she did not reach out and touch him, though tears pricked at the corners of her eyes. 

Finally he took a deep breath, let his shoulders fall. 

“Well,” he said. “I couldn’t seem to die.”

Now, her husband sits across from her at breakfast and gazes out the window, chin cradled on the bridge of his hands, food untouched. His eyes are still dark and full but their gleam is distant, washed pale in the morning sunlight. She does not need to ask him where his gaze is truly focused. Hers is there, too. Is that togetherness? It breaks her heart that this grief that happens to be mutual might be the closest they ever come to it. They still don’t talk, not really. Nothing more than they need to survive — asking each other where the children are, what’s for dinner, if Alexander is going out and how long he’ll be gone. 

She doesn’t worry when he goes out, not anymore. No matter how long it takes him to come back. Sometimes he returns with the sunset curling at his back, the dying light reaching for him, and even then she doesn’t care, doesn’t doubt him when he says he’s sorry, he got caught up at one end of town, needed more time. She knows he doesn’t have the energy to lie, to fuck, to take and take and take. Not after everything. 

Angie is losing her mind. This reality sinks in beside all the others, quiet and soft, like footsteps in the night. Eliza and Alexander sit up with the doctor once all the other children have gone to bed, taking it over tea like it’s any other piece of news. It’s a cruel ellipsis — you son is dead, in a way you killed him, and… — and it breaks her heart all over again, but somehow she takes it in stride, barely reacts, just nods as the doctor tells them there’s nothing he can do. It feels natural, almost. Grief. A second skin into which she slips easily, soundlessly. 

“Mother.” Angie had tugged at Eliza’s skirts just the other morning. “When is Philip coming home?” 

And Eliza, usually so good with pain, had panicked; with nowhere else to go, she had called desperately for Alexander. When he came, she rushed to the other room, sank to the floor, and hid her face in her arms, listening to his voice catch on the peaks of his grief as he tried to talk to their daughter. Finally he had sent Angie upstairs, and when he came into the room where Eliza had fled, he did not speak to her — knowing, of course, that she did not yet want him to — but one look was all it took for her to know. She had not cried. It hadn’t seemed fitting. 

There is suffering too terrible to name; things too large for tears. 

When the doctor leaves, Alexander stares at his hands for almost an hour, sitting on the couch while Eliza perches on a chair, still sipping her tea. Neither of them makes a move to come closer to each other. They do not even look at each other.

Still, Eliza thinks — nor do they move at all. 

She remembers, all the way back to that night when she asked him about his mother, how his words had cut her to the quick, how she had put down the quill, heart twisting for him, and pulled him close to her, cradling his head against her breast and whispering how much she loved him, how she would never leave, how he had a family, now and forever. He had smiled and kissed her; that night, they fucked slow on the couch he sleeps on now, but even as their bodies pressed infinitely close, even as he breathed her name and told her that he loved her, she sensed that she could not quite reach him. There was something she could not touch; something that he would not let her grasp. 

She knew he would always be far away from her, in a way. 

She watches him in the garden. That was his only condition when she asked him if they could move, please, leave behind the old house, leave behind everything — finally silent, stifled with pain. He wanted a garden, and now he tends to it painstakingly. He has not written in months, but suddenly green things flow from him, unfolding from the dark soil in sudden, heartbreaking bursts of life. Sometimes he takes Angie out and watches her dig in the earth, loosening it to make space for new seeds. Watching them together is one of Eliza’s secrets. She does not want him to know that she sees. Does not want to let him see her crying, silently, at the window. 

I couldn’t seem to die.

Now, she thinks, she understands what he meant. 

\--

Angelica comes by often, bringing John and the children, who play together contentedly in the afternoons, their laughter filling the house — welcome, though it makes Alexander wince, sometimes, to hear it echo brightly down the stairs. Eliza makes tea, and she and her sister take it in the parlor, sitting close together like they used to when they were girls. Eliza cradles her head on her sister’s shoulders and lets her eyes close, pretends for a moment that they are children again, that neither of them really knows what grief is. Angelica runs her hands through her hair, braiding in sometimes in soft plaits down the back of her neck, and listens to her if she wants to talk.

Sometimes, she thinks of Alexander. Hours in the garden; the strange, tender shoots of his handiwork, green against the waiting earth. She wonders if she regrets it. She doesn’t know. 

“I could have married a quiet man,” she says softly. It’s a fair afternoon, the sunlight slanting in through the curtains, painting pretty pale bars across the parlor. Angelica stops in the middle of a braid, holds still for a long moment, and then lets Eliza’s hair fall back around her face as she sits up so they can look each other. 

“You could have,” she murmurs. 

There is tension hidden in her voice, laced so quietly into the lilt and surge of her syllables that nobody but Eliza could ever detect it; her sister is a master at disguising her emotions, but she also feels — feels so much, too much, in a way that is shatteringly deep and overwhelming — and Eliza knows the fearsome power with which her heart burns better than anyone. 

Angelica puts a hand on her shoulder, squeezes; it feels far away. 

“But you didn’t want to.”

Eliza thinks, listening to the strange tenor of her voice, she thinks; she remembers. When the night gets dark — late; late. Late nights before the wedding, her dozing on the couch, her sister and Alexander drinking port and fighting, words flying like venom between them, like liquid, like heat.  
A glance exchanged between them over the dinner table. They way her sister screamed at him after Maria, enough fury in her voice to tear the house down to its foundations; even she didn’t love Eliza enough to feel that much pain for her, just one person, no matter how dear. Impossible: closing your eyes and dreaming. Eliza’s not blind; she noticed. She knew. If she ever admitted it to herself, well — that’s another story. It doesn’t matter now. 

“Did you love him? All this time?” 

Angelica looks at her. Eliza covers her sister’s hand. 

“It’s okay.” 

Even Eliza is surprised to see that her sister is blinking away tears. She looks away, pulling her lower lip between her teeth, and Eliza can see the skin of her throat ripple as she swallows. It feels like a blow when one tear escapes and cuts a trail down her cheek; Eliza is breathless with the idea of it, because Angelica never cries and she doesn’t want to think about how much it must have hurt her, enough to make her break at just the memory of the sacrifices she made. She presses her palm — urgently, urgently — and waits. 

“Yes,” Angelica says at long last, voice steady, though a suppressed sob still weighs down the words. “But he loves you, Eliza.” 

Eliza shakes her head.

“And you. Angelica. Don’t try to fool me now; I know he loves you.” She sighs. And then she realizes she is smiling. “He loves so many. I have long since — well, I don’t know. I can’t see reason for it to...for it to hurt me anymore. So much.” 

“Eliza…” 

“Does it still hurt you?” 

“Angelica,” whispers Eliza. 

“Yes?” 

“I’m starting to think it’s not worth it anymore.” 

“That’s alright,” she murmurs. And then she smiles at her, eyes rimmed in red, and Eliza believes it. “That might even be healing.” 

—

Sometimes, he comes with her to the store to help her carry the groceries. It is a thin, grey afternoon, and they are walking home in silence. Eliza is thinking about Angie, hoping she will take food tonight and they can all sit together at the dinner table as a family. There are days when she locks herself away and won’t eat for days on end, and then emerges from her room emaciated, a ghost, and Eliza has to bite back tears and she holds her, begs her to come to dinner. She is not looking where she’s going, and when her foot catches against the uneven pavement, the apples she is carrying spill from her arms.

She stops in time, for a moment, watching their bright bodies overflow across the curb. 

Alexander swears softly, muttering something about infrastructure, and it is the first time they have spoken today. Then, he bends over to start picking up the apples. After a minute, Eliza drops to her knees to help him, and when she glances at him, her stomach clenches. There are tears in his eyes. At the sight, she stills, her arm outstretched with one hand folded over an apple; he notices, arms full of apples, and meets her eyes, bearing down on her with the tremulous centers of them. 

Eliza wants to burst into tears. To laugh. The situation is too absurd. Here they are, crouched in the middle of the street, and for the first time in a long time her husband is looking at her, really looking at her, and swallowing like he is about to try to say something.

He reaches for the apple she is holding, takes it from her, and puts it in the bag with such tenderness that tears spring into her eyes, though she holds them back, clinging to the sharp, familiar pressure against her skin. He licks his lips, takes a deep breath. 

“I know I don’t deserve you, Eliza.” 

Now she really wants to laugh. Wants to say something — you don’t say, how dare you, don’t even look at me, if you hadn’t fucked her he would be here right now — but the words turn into thick, solid things in her throat and she is silent, gazing at him. The last thing she doesn’t even really believe, but in her weakest moments she still burns with it, wanting to scream it at him, see him shatter. She knows it gnaws at him; guilt unfounded, but guilt all the same, carving away his insides. To hear it from her would be the end of everything. Whatever remains in the balance between them she could tear apart in a single blow. 

But she is silent. Gazing at him. 

“But hear me out.” His eyes are wide and dark and wet, and it takes all her strength to keep looking at him. Then, his voice drops to a whisper: “Please. That would be enough.” 

At that her resolve snaps and she looks down, sharply, and grabs another apple, thrusts it in the bag; she can’t bear it anymore. A part of her is furious. How dare he. If he had listened to those words all those years ago, truly felt them, she can’t help but think that none of this would have happened. That they would have been happy. But a part of her knows what he is trying to do. Using her language; seeking salvation where he has always overlooked it. God knows his deliverance escapes him now. 

He is telling her that he understands, finally, that some things are beyond him. 

Slowly, she gets to her feet, clutching the bag of apples to her chest. He is undeterred — some things never change — and circles around her, mumbling rapidly, desperately. Something about Philip, how he would bring him back if he could, how he would do anything. He would die. It hits her that this man who once withstood half the earth’s cruelty and emerged like a spark, hissing and snapping with conviction, has at last crumbled beneath the whole of it. He would do anything. Anything. 

She can’t look at him. Can’t speak to him. Can’t tell if her heart is breaking for him or just breaking, breaking, breaking. He’s quiet for a second, wringing his hands. And that’s something she’s never seen him do. Never imagined he could do.

“But I’m not afraid,” he says. 

He should be, she thinks. What the universe has broken open upon them is terrifying. To have imagined death so much does not soften its devastation. 

“I know who I married.” 

He is telling her that her loves her. That much, she always knew. 

“If I could stay here by your side...Eliza, God.” His voice breaks. “That would be enough.” 

Oh. He needs her, then. 

And that — well. That is something new.

—

It was their wedding night, and Eliza was waiting.

That is, she had been waiting. Throughout their whole courtship, really. Alexander really had stuck to his resolve in regards to consummating their union, probably because he knew her father would flay him if he ever found out, and he didn’t trust her — not with how she fluttered, split open with joy, when he so much as kissed her — to keep it a secret. So she waited, letting him kiss her and crawl beneath her skirts, until finally it was their wedding. And then they were married! And at the reception he had hooked a hand around her neck when no one was looking and brushed the pad of his thumb over her pulse point; and later when they danced, he had nipped at her jugular, smirking — gently, full of love, but with a sharp, wicked promise. 

And now it was their wedding night, and her blood was alive with champagne and longing, and he was making her wait again. 

She understood, of course, that he wanted to drink one last round with his friends. She liked his friends, too. She liked Lafayette and Mulligan, how rowdy they were, how they hardly treated her like a woman at all, including her in all their boisterous games whenever she was near. She even liked Burr, though her husband — and despite her frustration, she thrilled at the word, her husband, Alexander was really her husband — could go on for hours about how exasperating he was, how little he understood him. She liked Laurens, too, with his large and searching gaze, though it troubled her how he laughed and sang with everyone else but her, how he treated her politely, kindly, but with a certain reservation that she did not understand. 

She asked Alexander about it once, but he only shrugged and said that Laurens was a man of many mysteries, few of which he himself could claim to understand; then, he changed the subject by kissing her. 

Kissing her — kissing her! Where was he? 

She wondered if she should take off her dress and wait in just her slip, seeing as that way it would be faster when he arrived. But maybe he would take pleasure in undressing her; he always raved about her skirts, fiddled with the knots in her bodice, the sprays of lace at her sleeves. She left the dress on. She sat on the edge of the bed for a moment, fiddling with the edge of the coverlet, and then she got up again and flitted to the mirror, gazing at herself. 

She was flushed with anticipation and champagne; the color became her, though, bringing out the brightness of her eyes and rendering her mouth a gentle blush. Her heart was pounding, and her breast rose and fell with it, expanding haphazardly from the tight white confines of her wedding dress. She traced the soft outlines of her cleavage with her hands, wondering how her body looked to Alexander, if he longed for her with the same harsh, thrumming anticipation as she did for him. 

“I may not live to see our glory…” 

She jumped, so involved with her reflection that she had not heard the door open. She felt heat flush through her body, and if she was pink before she must be crimson now — how fitting. 

“But I will gladly join the fight…” 

He was smiling, and she knew he was making fun of her a little bit, exploiting the fact that he just caught her running her hands over her waist in the mirror to make her flush even darker, which he would later tell her was even prettier, so beautiful. She knew she should be irritated, but at the moment she couldn’t quite bring herself to care; he was handsome usually, in a small, tight, dangerous way, but tonight was different. 

“Alexander!” She tried to seem put-off, tried to edge away as he reached for her, nosing along her jawline. She had to put up at least a little bit of a fight. It was terribly unfair of him to have made her wait for even a moment longer than she had to. “You certainly took your time.” 

His grin only deepened; he inched closer, threatening to kiss her. 

“And when our children tell our story…” 

His voice edged higher, thrilling on the last words, and her heart leapt — children, our children. Her resolve was crumbling. She wanted to kiss him. Wanted this, wanted him. 

Our story. All these shared things. 

No matter how much time she had to take.

Alexander looked at her, then, and she broke under the full weight of his gaze. He hooked his finger under her chin and she went easily, feeling the shadow of his lips and the rush of his living breath in the instant before he touched. 

“They’ll tell the story of tonight.” 

At last he kissed her, and she let herself go gladly, generously, with all the love she had to give. Even so, she couldn’t help wondering — as he eased her onto the bed, undid the laces of her bodice, and molded himself to her, closer than ever before and yet never quite close enough — if all this waiting would become her habit. 

Summer comes to the garden. Green explodes, and Alexander rolls up his sleeves; sweat beads on his brow. Sometimes she finds tomatoes or cucumbers on the kitchen table, still smelling of the earth. She includes them silently in their dinners, though she knows how his eyes linger on them when he sees them on his plate. 

They’ve learned to live with Angie. Learned to live with a new home. Learned to live with emptiness — with it all, everything. 

She watches Alexander’s back bend over the green. They’ve learned to live. 

Eliza can’t say what, exactly, she’s waiting for. 

\--

She doesn’t know why she starts joining him in the garden; maybe it’s because the summer is ending, and as she looks out at all the green she can’t bear to think that soon it will be gone without her having touched it once. Or Maybe it’s because a part of her knows that it is life that they need. Maybe it’s for no reason at all. But one day she sets down her tea, puts on her shoes, and goes outside — outside, where Alexander is watering the cucumbers, where he stands with his jaw loosening in surprise as he watches her approach.

He doesn’t say anything; he knows better. He just lets her be there, and she is grateful for it, standing wordlessly at his side. He doesn’t move for a while, but then he seems to realize that she’s not going to do or say anything, and he goes back to his work, kneeling and digging into the warm earth.

The sun bears down gently on the back of Eliza’s neck. For weeks, she goes out into the garden to join him and feels the light of it spreading down from the soft catch of skin at the nape to the collar of her gown, beneath which is slips and spreads, soaking into her. It’s warm, but fall is coming. She thinks of Icarus. 

“It’s beautiful,” she says to Alexander. It surprises her, that she spoke; she wasn’t expecting it. Neither was he, and his entire body stiffens before he puts his trowel down — gingerly, like it’s made of glass — and stands, turns and looks at her. 

“What?” 

Eliza finds, suddenly, that she can meet his eyes. They are wide and dark and fragile, hung in suspension between her words. 

“The garden. It’s beautiful.” 

He seems to grapple with himself for a long moment. 

“Thank you.” And then in the heartbeat of silence where she realizes she isn’t sure what else to say, he blurts out: “You can help if you want. I mean, next year. Even in the winter. Tilling the earth. And then seeding in the spring, and tending it all summer. Oh, Eliza, there’s so much to do.” 

She sees it in her mind’s eye, her and Alexander digging into the soft waiting earth. And she thinks of next spring — of the new, new shoots. 

“We can plant whatever you want,” says Alexander. His voice is raw, anxious, tripping over the syllables and saying too much. “Tomatoes and cucumbers again if you liked those. Maybe some peppers. Even fruit trees, we could do fruit trees. Oh, and flowers! I forgot about flowers this year but maybe next…” 

Eliza holds up a hand, gently — still without touching him — and he falls silent. His eyes are glossy, and when she looks at him, a tear escapes, curling down his cheek. 

“Alexander,” she says. “It’s enough.” 

She takes his hand. After a long moment, she feels his fingers tighten around hers. And then, it’s just them and the earth, together — and quiet, quiet at last.

\--

It’s not immediate, and it’s not easy. Sometimes the air feels light and sweet, almost like they’re teenagers again, hidden away in the nooks and crannies of her father’s home, laughing. Almost like Angelica is just around the corner with one eyebrow quirked, not quite disapproving. Almost like the idea of children is distant, joyful, pure — the future. Almost like the rest is really that simple. Unmarked by grief or anger or loss.

And then sometimes she can barely speak to him, and sometimes she can say too much, and she knows it’s because she finally feels safe enough to let go of everything she tried to hide from him, so it’s good, but it hurts, and it hurts him, too, she can see the wounds she winds into his skin alongside all the others, fresh and brilliant and forever a part of him. 

But fighting is good, she knows. It’s good. Yelling and screaming and crying — it’s more than what they had before, and it’s good. And when he kisses her now, she does not feel the same sickening terrible desire; a part of her wants to tear his hair out by the roots but most of her just wants to hold him, and she knows it’s good. Things break between them, and it’s good, it’s good, it’s good. 

The first time they make love again, after everything, it’s in the wake of a fight. That evening, Angie wouldn’t take food, and after arguing with her until they both broke down in tears, Eliza sent her to her room and made the other children clean up after dinner while she composed herself in Alexander’s study, one of the only places in their house where the children knew never to go. She was thinking of him, of course — of Phillip, the lightness of his laugh, the easy way he had of comforting her. So mature for a boy barely out of childhood. 

She’s standing by the window, gazing out into the garden with the night sunk into it, when she hears him come in. 

“I’m so tired,” she says softly, moving away from him; she pulls out the chair at his desk and sinks into it, resting her forehead on her hand. 

“I know.” He immediately sits down across from her — so worried, now, so attuned to her, and sometimes she wishes he was more like before, barrelling ahead, lifting her up with the sheer strength of his conviction, even if it would ultimately kill them both. It’s just that when she’s hurting like this she can hardly bear to have him so close. 

“Alexander,” she says, so softly it barely makes a sound. 

He covers her hand with his own. “I know, Eliza.” 

She pulls her hand away, even though she regrets it not a moment after, the way his face tightens for just a moment before he forcefully smoothes it out. 

“Sometimes I still can’t believe it,” she says. 

He shuts his eyes. “I’m sorry.” 

“I don’t need you to be sorry.” 

He jaw tenses for a moment. 

“What do you need?” 

“Nothing.” It tears out of her throat harsher than she expected, and he flinches; then — and she would be lying if she said she was not gratified — anger sparks in his eyes. She wants more of it; more of him, as he always was. “Nothing will bring it back.” 

“It?” 

“The way things were.” 

“Goddammit.” And when his hands curl into fists on the table, her spine thrills with it. “I don’t know what you want me to say.” 

“Nothing.” 

“You know that’s not — fuck, Eliza.” 

She looks at him. His eyes are glossy with tears. 

“What?” 

“I love you.” 

“I know.” 

“No. I love you.” 

She looks at him for a long minute with something sticking in her throat, and then she gets up, walks around the desk — slowly, as if in a dream — and sinks her fingers into his hair. His kiss is fierce, bruising, full of pain, and she knows he meant it, every word. He pulls her onto his lap, and she goes easily; when she feels him press against her legs, she pulls away and meets his eyes, pupils blown with desire but ringed with fear. 

“It’s okay,” she whispers. 

He nods, and then she slips off his lap and, taking his hand, leads him to their bed. 

When they used to make love, there was no sense of resolution to it. Not that he wasn’t a good lover; he was, brilliant even, and Eliza thought many times of how tragic it was that there were so many women in the world whose husbands had manners too fine to teach them what they were missing. She was grateful for Alexander’s roughness, the crooked gleam of his grin, the way he knew things that Angelica only alluded to, with a sharp quirk of her brow. She loved him for it. He was always generous, gentle when she wanted him to be, ferocious when she asked for it. She loved him.

But even when they finished, there was a sense of continuing — as if this was not over, as if there was something else, something he was looking to, just beyond the horizon of her body. She would hold him, kiss the lines on his forehead, and wonder what, exactly, he was waiting for. 

This is different. As he slips down her body, she finds pieces of things falling together, and when she comes it is with a billowing gentleness — an exhale, almost a sigh of relief. And when he shudders against her, she digs her nails into the new softness of his hips, gratified by the real give and take of it, of Alexander Hamilton’s changing flesh and blood. He holds her after they finish, running his hands through her hair, and though he was always tender there is something new in the way he touches her, like he understands what, exactly, he cradles in his arms. 

“Eliza,” he whispers. “Eliza, Eliza, Eliza.” 

Her name, again and again. Like he wants to say something else but he is still afraid. She silences him with a kiss and blows out the lamp, curling back into the circle of his body in the darkness. 

On their wedding night she had lain in his arms for the first time, breathing in the sweat that had collected at the nape of his neck, and aching with her love for him and with fear — of the war, of his lust for glory, of his body broken and bleeding, though she did not yet understand that fear would become such a vital part of their marriage, one of the many gears that made it turn.

“Alexander,” she had whispered eventually, shaking him awake. “Alexander, I can’t sleep.” 

Back then, she couldn’t tell him what kept her awake. Instead she buried her face in his chest and let him whisper to her, tell her how much he loved her, how he would never go away; and so she waited for sleep, feeling the electricity of him crackle across her skin. 

She thinks that now, lying in his arms, she is not afraid. And yet, she thinks to herself — and yet.. Sleeping beside him feels just as electric. 

\--

The next morning, she wakes, and he is beside her. She can tell from the pale slices of sunlight that cut through their room that it is a clear, crisp day; through the gaps in the curtains, she can see frost climbing the widows, and if it weren’t for the warmth of the blankets and Alexander’s body she thinks she would be cold. It is early. The children are still asleep. 

Alexander is turned towards her, hands folded on the pillow next to him, hair spilling over his shoulders, washed pale grey in the early morning sun. She reaches out, twists a lock of it around her finger, and laughs softly when a fine crease appears between his brows; he shifts, leaning into her touch. She drops his hair and reaches for one of his hands, slotting her fingers between the gaps in his. She watches as he stirs, the crease at his brow deepening before his eyes open -- not fluttering, but a slow, continuous opening, like dawn on the horizon. 

He looks at her then. She thinks about all the times she has gazed into his eyes. He always knew their power, always understood how to use it to soften her, strengthen her, break her apart. He is an expert in every tool this life has ever given him, every way to get ahead, and he is always planning, thinking to the next step, even in something as quiet and private as a glance between lovers. 

She wonders if, before now, he has ever simply just looked at her. 

He just looks at her for a long time, and then he edges forwards, lifting their joined hands to pull her closer. They kiss slowly, almost like they used to when they were little more than teenagers. Like they have time, which they never quite did, not even when loss did not color all the ways in which they touched each other. 

She breaks the kiss and he runs one hand along the lines of her face, the bones of her eyebrows and cheeks, and down across the bow of her lips. His tenderness seems impossible. She thinks that maybe the color of loss can be beautiful, too. 

“I remember him,” she whispers.

“What?” 

She knows he knows. His hand tightens around hers and she feels his body gravitate towards hers, not quite touching but closer, closer. 

“I remember him, Alexander.” 

He watches her now, steadily, and he has remembered the purpose of his gaze; she feels the dark cores of his eyes lifting her, holding her up. 

“What about him?”

“Everything.” Her voice tears softly. “When he was a baby, the way he used to wake us up so early. And you would have just barely gone to sleep!” 

“I remember. And you always made me get up and see to him, you monster.” 

She laughed, almost surprised at the sound but not quite — something about it felt unbearably right, like it belonged between them in that moment.

“Do you remember when he learned to read? He was so proud. All he wanted to do was read to you.” 

“I’d never forget. His ninth birthday, too.” 

“My name is Philip! I am a poet! He worked so hard on that...”

Eliza laughed again, pressing her forehead against Alexander’s.

“And do you remember that time we had to go to dinner at the Burr’s? The way he played with little Theodosia for hours, and then over dessert we suddenly heard screaming, and they had gotten into an argument about the national bank? They were twelve! Twelve…” 

“Oh, Eliza.” Alexander was smiling, the lines of his face crinkled with warmth. “At that moment, I’m not sure I had ever been prouder of anything I helped to make.” 

His eyes were filled with tears. Eliza knew, vaguely, that she was crying too. She reached up and thumbed away the first tear that slipped down his cheek, half-expecting it to be dark like the overflowing ink of his eyes. 

“So outspoken.” She was whispering now, memories too precious to really be heard, almost mouthing the words. “So like you.” 

Alexander shook his head. 

“He was better than me. He was also like you.” 

Eliza was sobbing now, quietly, her lower lip caught between her teeth. 

“Alexander,” she managed. “I’ll never stop mourning him.” 

And then he is clutching at her, pressing her infinitely close to him; and she can feel him crying, the gentle ripples of it against her ribcage, the wetness as he burrows into her neck, hands tangling in her hair. 

“Never, Betsey,” he whispers. “Of course we won’t.” 

—

The first time she said she loved him, she planned every last detail. He was coming over to visit that afternoon, and the night before she had written out her speech on a slip of paper and forced Angelica to read it over with her. She had anxiously gripped her sister’s hand, longing for her brightness, the sharpness of her wit, to do justice to the outlines of her heart and make it enough, somehow, for Alexander. 

“How is it?”

“Eliza, please.” Angelica had stroked her hair, pushing it from one shoulder to another, and tapped her nose affectionately. “He loves you, too.” 

And she had wondered if it could really be that simple. 

The first time she says she loves him — after everything — she doesn’t plan it. She isn’t even sure she’s ready; she’s been thinking about it, sure, but she still hadn’t decided if she was going to tell him or if they needed to wait longer. But then he comes home flushed up to his ears, incensed like she hasn’t seen him in years, and then he’s telling her that Thomas Jefferson dropped him a line today, wanting to know his thoughts about the election, and really, can she believe it, the nerve. His eyes are burning bright and he keeps throwing up his hands and spitting out jargon she’s never heard and wondering about the morality of it all and it’s the first time he’s seemed like himself in so long and she can’t help it. 

“Alexander,” she murmurs. 

“I swear, for years they dream that I’ll quit or fail or die or God knows what, making my life a living hell all the while, and then the moment I’m gone they’re suddenly crawling back wanting to know my opinion, of all things, as if I ever held that back...still, for all they’ve done to me I’m honestly of half a mind to…” 

“Alexander.”

She grabs his chin and he falls silent, staring. 

“I love you,” she says. 

His jaw slackens. And she can’t help it: she smiles. 

“I love you.” The words are firm and soft and true. And she feels something open up inside of her. “I love you, Alexander.” 

‘I,” he says, and then his voice cracks and billows open as if on an exhale, and she sees something in his face shatter, break down into a vast, encompassing simplicity. “I love you too.” 

When she kisses him, she thinks of the cool, cool touch of the waves. 

—

These days it is so rare for Alexander not to sleep the entire night beside her that when she rolls over and her body edges onto his half of the bed, the emptiness startles her awake. She used to be afraid that she would always feel paranoid if he was gone, never trusting him again. But now it is with a fine, easy certainty that she knows, after all these years, that Alexander Hamilton has finally settled. His light is no less brilliant for it, just calmer, steadier. He is complete, whole, and so is she; in a strange, aching way, they are happier with each other than ever before.

She gets up, slips into her dressing gown, and makes her way to his study. 

“Alexander, come back to sleep.” 

He looks up from his writing, eyes bleary with sleep, but when he recognizes her, warmth crinkles the lines of his face. She walks around his chair and circles his chest with her arms, pressing her cheek against the top of his head; he takes her hands, presses his lips against her knuckles. 

“I have an early meeting out of town.” 

“It’s still dark outside...” 

He kisses her hands again, and she smiles past a strange sadness that is suddenly pushing its way into her throat. He feels impossibly precious to her, sitting there awash in the candlelight and the almost imperceptible glow of the dawn, a ribbon of blue edging into the inky black of night. She presses her lips to the top of his head. She does not want him to go. 

“Come back to bed. That would be enough.” 

He squeezes her hand.

“I’ll be back before you know I’m gone.” 

“Alexander…” 

“Hey.” And then he guides her around to face him, easing her down onto his lap, and kisses her. “I love you.” 

“Well, I’m going back to sleep,” she says, in a voice that does not tremble. “I love you, too.” 

He kisses her hand one last time before he lets her go. 

“Best of wives and best of women.”

And in that moment she thinks that a part of her has settled, too — into accepting his distance, the ways he can never be reached. 

— 

At his funeral, she does not cry. Angelica holds her hand, and their children — some of them so close to being grown, some still so young, too young — clutch her skirts. She gives his eulogy, perhaps the first time anyone has ever spoken for Alexander Hamilton. At the wake, she shakes many hands, even lets some of their friends embrace her, kiss her cheek. She looks after Angie and makes sure everyone has enough to eat, and once everyone is gone, John puts the children to bed so that she and Angelica clean up.

Angelica stays the night, sleeping in her bed, even holding her in the night. Eliza is grateful; for a few more nights, she will not have to think about the emptiness. But in the early hours of the morning she wakes, and despite her sister’s even breathing beside her, she can’t go back to sleep. Eventually she rises, slips into her dressing gown, and finds herself where she knew, somehow, she would end up all along. 

Angelica finds her there, sitting on the floor of his office, surrounded by his letters and writings, everything. She wraps her arms around her and then they both cry, but Eliza is careful to put the letters down, first, not wanting their tears to touch the ink, to ruin the perfect ways it runs where, for his entire life, Alexander Hamilton had forgotten to blot. 

This time, she wants to save their narrative. Every word.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow! i am so sorry this took so long. i meant to finish it over spring break but i didn't quite manage to, and then school kicked my ass. 
> 
> thanks so much for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> turned out way longer than i meant it to, lmao. i wrote this for two reasons:
> 
> 1) eliza is my favorite character in the musical, my ride and die, and though i have infinite problems with her relationship with hamilton i still wanted to explore it thoroughly and also pretend it was happier & more equitable than it most likely actually was
> 
> 2) i chose to structure this piece around the reynolds pamphlet because i LOVE fics about fixing relationships after one partner cheats. they offer so many opportunities for really exploring the complex emotional frameworks of love and forgiveness. seriously this whole fic is just me indulging myself.
> 
> in these endeavors i will be forever indebted to "like a bastard on the burning sea," a fic where harry styles cheats on louis tomlinson (one direction), which changed my perspective on relationships and healing and made me love recovery-from-cheating fics like nobody's business.
> 
> anyway,
> 
> i have done really, exceptionally minimal historical research for this fic. i am sure anachronisms abound; don’t tell me, i don’t care. e.g., would eliza have accepted her husband’s bisexuality just like that? like, no. but i don’t care.
> 
> related, i don’t really ship lams that much bc their dynamic just doesn’t interest me, but i do believe it really happened, and in any case over my dead gay body will i erase alexander hamilton’s queerness. also, this:
> 
> In spite of Schuylers black eyes, I have still a part for the public and another for you; so your impatience to have me married is misplaced; a strange cure by the way, as if after matrimony I was to be less devoted than I am now.
> 
> from alex to john. fuckin classic. anyway,
> 
> according to my sources, the reynolds pamphlet was published in late august. also according to my sources, christmas was a subject of much debate among colonial christians, but some did celebrate it. let’s just assume the hamiltons did.
> 
> look, i don’t care how realistic it is for eliza to sneak out and visit hamilton’s camp. it’s hot. 
> 
> related: most of the sex in here is solely to assuage how utterly gay i am for eliza hamilton. for real. drop him, girl; we’ll write our own narrative together. i dream about eating her out. anyway.
> 
> also related: ELIZA WEARING PINK, goodbye. 
> 
> y’all ever think about the fact that it basically was hamilton’s fault that his kid died? 
> 
> can you imagine
> 
> IF YOU AIN’T SEEN HAMILTON & U DON’T WANT SPOILERS DON’T READ THIS PART: 
> 
> obviously the scene w laurens and the letter is inspired by the staging. 
> 
> also at the end of stay alive (reprise) eliza fucking WAILS and alexander reaches for her hand across phillip’s DEAD FUCKING BODY and she snatches it away because she hasn’t forgiven him & it’s maybe the worst moment in the whole show & that’s what i was alluding to, you’re welcome
> 
> OKAY SPOILERS DONE
> 
> okie dokie, that’s all folks. thank you very much for reading. again, second installment is complete and will be posted in a couple of days. come visit me at asslicker2012 on tumblr; yes, really. all the love and thanks again!


End file.
